What are we waiting for? The development of Godot, II

Abstract

The design of Godot, a computer system for computer-aided room acoustics modeling and simulation, was described in an earlier paper [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 69, S36 (1981)]. In this paper, issues affecting its use in the production environment are discussed and current research issues are examined briefly. The system has been moved from a mainframe computer to a minicomputer having graphics facilities suitable for interactive design; we will review the way room acoustics modeling and simulation are treated in the larger context of computer-aided architectural design. Taped examples of simple simulations will be presented, and compared with examples recorded in the actual rooms. Godot currently traces sound beams incrementally; in this way it avoids exhaustive intersection testing with all faces in the room representation. Current work aims at generalizing the orientation-dependent “bounding boxes” used in coarse “hit” detection to yield an intrinsic bounding volume for each wall element. As a side benefit this method will allow us to model moving portions of a room. [Work supported by the Science Council of British Columbia, grant ♯41 (RC-4).]